War Machine

James Rhodes met Tony Stark in a war zone, which tells you everything about the relationship. A Marine helicopter pilot who became Stark's personal aviator and then his closest friend, Rhodey spent years as the most competent man in the room while everyone looked at the guy in the suit. Then Tony's drinking got bad enough that someone had to fly the armour, and Rhodey put it on, and the world found out he was a hero in his own right.

War Machine is what happens when a career officer designs an Iron Man suit. Where Stark builds elegance, Rhodes builds a gun platform: shoulder cannon, gatling, missile racks, hardpoints for anything the Air Force can requisition. He fights like a soldier, which means discipline, cover and objectives rather than improvisation. In practice that makes him more dangerous in a war and less flashy in a fight, and he is entirely at peace with the trade.

His loyalty has cost him more than anyone in Tony's orbit. Rhodey has been sidelined, replaced, court-martialled, paralysed and killed. Thanos broke him out of the sky during Civil War II and he came back anyway. He is the Avenger who keeps showing up without a marketing department, and the only person alive who can tell Tony Stark he is wrong and be listened to.

Rhodey debuted in Iron Man #118 as Stark's pilot in a David Michelinie, John Byrne and Bob Layton issue, and spent five years as supporting cast. Iron Man #170 in 1984 changed that, putting him in the armour full-time while Tony collapsed into alcoholism. Rhodes was Iron Man for the better part of three years, including a stint on the Avengers, and the suit's neural interface slowly drove him to migraines and rage because it was calibrated for Stark.

The War Machine armour arrived in Iron Man #284 in 1992, built as the Variable Threat Response Battle Suit and handed to Rhodes when Tony faked his death. It gave him a distinct identity for the first time and led to a solo War Machine ongoing in 1994 and a run with Force Works.

Rhodes has cycled through Iron Patriot during Dark Reign's aftermath and the Secret Avengers, and Greg Pak's 2008 War Machine run rebuilt him as a cyborg after catastrophic injury, leaning into the idea that the man and the weapon had become inseparable.

Civil War II opened by killing him, shot out of the sky by Thanos, a death that split the superhero community and drove Carol Danvers' side of the conflict. He was later restored, and has since served as an Avengers mainstay and an intermittent government liaison.